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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23988490">tear at my old scars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudlesslysky/pseuds/cloudlesslysky'>cloudlesslysky</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, M/M, POV Draco Malfoy, Pre-Relationship, Soulmates, Temporary Amnesia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:27:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,881</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23988490</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudlesslysky/pseuds/cloudlesslysky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is grey. He does not remember anything, not even his own name.</p><p>He shies away from mirrors. He cannot speak and he does not understand what others say.</p><p>He wanders the hall of his home aimlessly, as if lost in a maze and searching for an exit.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>365</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>tear at my old scars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The title comes from the song Roses by Poets of the Fall.</p><p>Many thanks to LLAP115 for beta:ing this for me!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The world is grey now, in a way that he's never experienced before.</p><p>He tries to remember the days of his childhood, everything had seemed almost impossibly bright and colourful. He tries to remember days playing in the garden among the flowers and the bushes, days of running in the fields among the wildflowers.</p><p>He tries to remember days of lying in the grass, watching shapes in the clouds during the day, and the constellations in the stars during the night. He tries to remember the stories his parents told him before bedtime, tries to remember the stories whispered by the portraits as he walked past them during daytime.</p><p>He tries to remember what colour looked like, what joy felt like, what life once was.</p><p>But he can't.</p><p>Everything seems washed out and grey, his memories pale and fraying at the edges.</p><p>Even as he looks at his parents, even when they stand in front of him, begging him to talk to them, he can barely see them, barely hear them. Instead, it is like a distant echo, the memory of their voices becoming lost in time.</p><p>Sometimes his friends—are they his friends?—come by. Something in the way they act makes him think that they are... but perhaps they are strangers. They try to talk to him, try to rouse him...</p><p>But they too are faded, like a photograph that has lost its magic and is slowly starting to erase itself off its parchment.</p><p>Everything around him is hazy, as if the world is perpetually covered in mist. Most of the world seems hidden from him now, he can no longer see far ahead. Instead he stumbles around, as if in a daze. He falls over, again and again, as he misjudges a step, or misses something that's in his path.</p><p>He wanders the halls of the Manor, halls where horrors seep from the very walls and foundations, until suddenly they have changed. Slowly but surely, the Manor is changing around him, it looks less and less like the place of his faded memories, and less and less like the place of his nightmares.</p><p>Strangers come and go, even as he slowly moves through the rooms. Some of them ignore him, too focused on what they are doing—he does not know what it is—but some of them try to talk to him. They make him sit down in the lounge, they talk and talk and talk... They brandish their wands, and he feels their magic wash over his skin like razors.</p><p>He flinches every single time, unable to stop himself. It is one of the few things he can still feel—the oppressive, painful, razor sharp feel of other people's magic—but he wonders if, perhaps, he wouldn't prefer to feel nothing at all.</p><p>His parents cry sometimes. At least, he thinks they do. He cannot be sure, it's so hard to hear or see anything.</p><p>He wonders if this is what the world is like now, if this is what became of it after the war. Sometimes he wonders if, perhaps, he is under a curse. He quickly loses interest in thinking about it. It hardly matters, does it?</p><p>Whether or not the world is in colour for others, whether or not this is merely some sort of numb afterlife... It hardly matters.</p><p>He cannot feel his magic anymore.</p><p>He feels hollow, empty, without it. As if someone scraped his insides out with something sharp, and left but a shell of flesh and bones behind. <em>That</em> he misses. The few times he musters the energy, the <em>ability</em>, to care even slightly about his life, his situation... It is his magic he misses. The feeling of it rushing through his body, the ever present warmth.</p><p>He has a routine now.</p><p>He wanders the Manor for most of the day, not knowing what he's searching for... If he's searching for anything at all. Perhaps he isn't, perhaps he's just wandering.</p><p>His parents, or one of the strangers, or one of the many funny little creatures that swarm around his feet and look at him with huge eyes as they tug at their large ears... Someone will interrupt his walk and take him to... He thinks it's the dining hall. But it looks so different from what it once was. The furniture is different, the rugs, the curtains, the look of the fireplace.</p><p>They make him eat. He tastes nothing, but eats what's on the plate they've put before him.</p><p>Sometimes, his mother looks at him with hopeful eyes... But he doesn't know why. And every time he watches as the hope in her face falls. He watches as his father's shoulders slump.</p><p>He continues to eat.</p><p>Then he wanders again, until he reaches the... He thinks it's a library. There are so many bookcases, so many books... But what he's there for is the large armchair. He sits down in it and stares out the large windows at the grounds below. He watches as day turns to night.</p><p>And then...</p><p>Someone takes him away from there, takes him back to what he thinks was once his room. And he goes to bed.</p><p>He sleeps.</p><p>He wakes up.</p><p>And then he wanders again.</p><p>Some days, they herd him out on the grounds. Sometimes, his father sits him down by the pond and curls around him, talking and talking.</p><p>Sometimes his father cries, he thinks. He cannot be sure.</p><p>They whisper a word when they speak to him, but he does not know what it means.</p><p>He thinks it may be his name... But he doesn't remember.</p><p>There are fish in the pond. He watches as they swim in hypnotic circles, round and round and round.</p><p>Sometimes he's tired, and he lies down in the grass next to the pond. He wonders if he did that before, before the world turned grey.</p><p>He wonders if colour will ever return, or if this is all that will be from now on.</p><p>He moves through his life like this, day after day.</p><p>The strangers, those who ignore him, have stopped coming to the Manor. The Manor that now looks completely different from what it once was. At least, he thinks so. It has changed as he's walked these halls, so it must be different now. That is what change means, isn't it? He nearly wonders who they were, the strangers, but it doesn't matter. Nothing matters, does it?</p><p>The other strangers, those who try to talk to him, they still come. With their words he cannot understand and their razor sharp magic. They talk and they talk, sometimes with him, and sometimes with his parents.</p><p>He wonders what they're after. He wonders what it is they want from him.</p><p>He doesn't think he holds any particular secrets, he doesn't know... much of anything. He simply moves through his days, existing, and stares at a world in faded greyscale.</p><p>Sometimes he wonders what colours things really are... He can tell that his father's hair is very pale, and his mother's hair is darker, though not by much. He wonders what his own hair looks like, but he hasn't looked in a mirror since... Since. He's walked past mirrors, but his eyes lose focus and everything turns blurry when he tries to look into them.</p><p>He fears them.</p><p>He wonders what secrets they hold.</p><p>His parents talk, the funny little creatures with the big eyes and the long ears talk, the strangers talk, the strangers who might be his friends talk.</p><p>He cannot hear what any of them say.</p><p>Sometimes he opens his mouth, but all that leaves his throat is air. He has forgotten how to speak, he thinks. He's forgotten what the others know, because he sees them speak, sees them communicate... He doesn't. He's silent, he doesn't understand...</p><p>He wanders.</p><p>Time passes. He only knows the days by how he's moved from his armchair by the window to the bed. He counts the days by when he falls into the pitch black oblivion of sleep, before the morning rays of white wakes him up once more.</p><p>Sometimes he feels his parents' magic wash over him.</p><p>It doesn't feel like razors, the way the strangers' do, but rather... Like a memory long forgotten. Like the gentle caress of the wind in the garden, when he walks outside.</p><p>He idly wonders why it feels so different, but it doesn't matter much.</p><p>The strangers who may be his friends come to the Manor less and less. Weeks pass before he realises that they have stopped coming by entirely. It seems they weren't his friends after all.</p><p>He wonders who they were.</p><p>The days grow darker. He watches raindrops run like small rivers down the glass of the window as night falls earlier and earlier.</p><p>It rains often.</p><p>His parents never let him go outside when it does. They stop him by the door and pull him into the large room with the sofas and the fireplace instead.</p><p>Some days he stays curled up on a sofa in that room all day, unmoving.</p><p>He thinks his mother cries.</p><p>One day, his mother brings in a new creature. He hasn't seen if before, he does not know what it is, but she places it in his arms, and it is soft. It has fur. Pale and bright fur. And as he holds it, it presses its nose against his cheek—small and cold and wet—and he can feel it vibrating against his chest, in his ears.</p><p>When he wanders, the small furry creature wanders with him. Until it wants him to carry it, then it lets out loud angry noises.</p><p>He cannot speak, neither can the small furry creature... But he understands it anyway.</p><p>When he curls up in his armchair, or on the sofa, or in the grass, or in the bed, the small furry creature curls up with him. He wonders what it is, he wonders why it follows him...</p><p>Sometimes he wonders if it's him. If he's seeing a small furry representation of himself, brought to life by his mother's magic. Can she do that?</p><p>Sometimes it sits on his lap, places its small paws on his chest, and cries loudly in his face. Its teeth are sharp, but it doesn't bite. He tries to soothe it, lets out breathy sounds as he strokes over its fur. It calms, but he wonders if it finds any comfort in his actions.</p><p>He spends his day with the small furry creature at his side, in his arms, on his shoulders.</p><p>His father pulls him in close more often, he doesn't protest it. His mother holds his hands in hers, he doesn't mind that either.</p><p>Sometimes they walk with him, the noise of their voices washing over him as he carries the small furry creature with him. Its tongue is raspy, almost hurts when it licks his jaw. The sensation, so different from everything else, is welcome.</p><p>Where all sensation is soft and muffled, indistinct, the rasp of the small furry creature's tongue against his jaw, against his cheek, is a shocking contrast. He finds that he wants more of it. He <em>wants</em> something, suddenly.</p><p>He wants to <em>feel</em>.</p><p>The thought is sharp and unbidden, and the desire fades almost as quickly as it came. He continues to move through his life with the small furry creature, continues to do as his parents, as the funny creatures with the big eyes and long ears, want. He doesn't know what <em>he</em> wants, so if they wish for him to sit somewhere, or eat something...</p><p>He wonders what food used to taste like. He knows, in his clearer moments when everything is less fuzzy around the edges, that he used to like certain tastes. He wonders what they were... He wonders what they tasted like.</p><p>The world fluctuates, sharpens and fades in turn.</p><p>The strangers he once thought may be his friends return. They hold his hands, they speak at him, they cry. He still doesn't understand them, he doesn't know why they have returned now.</p><p>The small furry creature vibrates on his shoulders while they're there, rasps its tongue against his jaw, and yowls in his ear.</p><p>Before they leave again, the strangers he once thought may be his friends, pull him into their arms. His shirt grows wet as the shorter presses her face against his shoulder. He feels damp in his hair as the taller buries his face there. They're crying.</p><p>After they've left, his mother pulls a small piece of cloth from somewhere, and dabs it over his cheeks.</p><p>He wonders why they are wet.</p><p>He sleeps.</p><p>He wanders.</p><p>He eats.</p><p>He sleeps.</p><p>In the morning light, he looks at the small furry creature and its pale fur. It has no name.</p><p>He knows that... that names can be important. The thought spins in his head as he wanders the Manor, as he eats his meals. He knows he... he had a name once. His parents have names. The funny creatures with the big eyes and the long ears must have names. The strangers he once thought might have been his friends must have names too... The strangers with the razor sharp magic must have names...</p><p>But the small furry creature... It doesn't have a name, does it? It cannot give itself a name, it cannot speak, just like him.</p><p>It is without a name, even <em>he</em> has a name, though he has forgotten it.</p><p>He struggles with that thought for days, more awake and aware than he has been since... Since... For as long as his memory stretches. Not that that is especially far, considering how it all blurs together into a smudge of days that look the same, only changing after the small furry creature came into his life.</p><p>They're in the big room with the sofas, his parents are there too, and he's looking at the small furry creature.</p><p>Staring at it, really.</p><p>He opens his mouth, and breathes out puffs of air, choking on his tongue almost, large and dead as it feels in his mouth, unwilling to cooperate.</p><p>"Hah... Hah... Cah..."</p><p>In the corner of his eyes, the places where everything is so foggy, he can see movement. He thinks his parents are moving, but he doesn't move his gaze from the small furry creature.</p><p>It vibrates in his hands as it places its paws on his chest and licks at his jaw again.</p><p>Rasp. Rasp. Rasp.</p><p>"Cah... Cah... Cas..." He chokes on the sounds. Tries to articulate something his brain isn't even properly thinking.</p><p>The little furry creature doesn't have a name.</p><p>Rasp. Rasp. Rasp.</p><p>"Cas... Cass... Cassiee..." he gasps, chest feeling tight, his lungs aching, and his eyes stinging from how avidly he's staring.</p><p>His parents are making noises now, he knows they're coming closer. But he keeps his attention on the small furry creature. Its fur is so pale and thick and soft. He tries to keep himself together, keep this odd sharpness for as long as he can.</p><p>"Cassio... Cassiopeia..." he finally manages to force out.</p><p>He relaxes into the sofa like a puppet with its magic cut off. His eyes droop, and everything starts to turn fuzzy around the edges.</p><p>Rasp. Rasp. Rasp.</p><p>The small furry creature, Cassiopeia, lies on his chest, and keeps licking him with that sharp tongue. But he feels himself slipping away into a daze, suddenly exhausted.</p><p>He sleeps.</p><p>He sleeps.</p><p>When he wakes, he is in the bed he always wakes up in. Cassiopeia, the name seems important. He doesn't know where it came from, doesn't know why he chose <em>that</em> in particular... But the small furry creature is Cassiopeia, and Cassiopeia is sleeping on the pillow next to his, as it always does.</p><p>He gets out of the bed, stumbles.</p><p>Cassiopeia is instantly alert, caterwauling loudly as it jumps off the bed and starts moving around his legs.</p><p>He feels shaky and tired, but everything seems so... So clear... As if a veil has lifted from his eyes, and he can see much better than he used to. But things... don't seem to look much different, despite it. Everything is still in shades of grey, everything is still fuzzy around the edges... It's just... less so, somehow.</p><p>Cassiopeia's loud noises bring the sound of footsteps with it, suddenly. And the door opens, and his father stands there.</p><p>He thinks his father looks scared, but even as his father starts speaking, he cannot understand it. He still cannot make sense of speaking, it is all simply noise that washes over him.</p><p>His father stops then, and he thinks his father looks sad, but then his father moves to his side and helps him to his feet, gently stroking his hair and making gentle shushing noises. He likes that better, when his parents don't try to speak, when they just make gentle noises he can understand.</p><p>And then his father looks down and says... something, he doesn't understand it, except for one single word: "Cassiopeia."</p><p>He nods at his father, takes comfort in his presence and allows himself to press close to that larger body.</p><p>"Cassiopeia," he says, the word falling easier from his lips now than it did before. Somehow... Somehow having said it once, saying it again is easy. He no longer chokes on his tongue as he tries to say it.</p><p>He knows a name, the name of the small furry creature that is his constant companion. Cassiopeia.</p><p>He wanders, Cassiopeia following in his footsteps, riding on his shoulders, or sleeping in his arms. He carries it with him as he moves aimlessly through the Manor. These places he's seen before are suddenly sharper, seem more real. He wonders if everything can come back into focus, look as sharp and clear as Cassiopeia had the day he finally said its name.</p><p>He wonders if things will change, now that he knows a word. Now that he has <em>spoken</em> something aloud.</p><p>He wonders if he will know more names, more than just that of the small furry creature. He wonders if, perhaps, he will remember his name, or his parents' names, or the Manor's name... Or perhaps even the names of the strangers he once thought might be his friends.</p><p>Time passes as it has, indistinct and hazy. He walks the halls of the Manor constantly reminding himself that the little furry creature is named Cassiopeia. He sometimes feels a churning in his stomach, and like his lungs are being crushed, at the thought that he may forget its name again if he does not repeat it to himself constantly.</p><p>If he forgets that the little furry creature's name is Cassiopeia, will that veil fall over the world again? Will it all grow even hazier? If he loses a name he's gained, what will happen? Perhaps he'll stop functioning entirely.</p><p>"Cassiopeia..." he whispers, desperate to remember how to shape it with his mouth.</p><p>The little furry creature turns its head to look at him and lets out a noise, as if answering him. It does that every time, as if it’s responding to his call. As if it's confirming that he's right, Cassiopeia <em>is</em> its name and he is right. As if it’s telling him that he does know a name, that he has not lost everything.</p><p>His parents seem... happier. He's not sure, he can't... They seem less old. He thinks they smile sometimes.</p><p>He wonders if they're happy that he knows a name. If they think that perhaps he will know more names now that he knows one?</p><p>The strangers with the razor sharp magic come back, he sees them talking with his parents in the big room with the sofas a lot. Sometimes his parents bring him in there and the strangers’ horrible magic washes over him anew.</p><p>With Cassiopeia in his arms, it is more bearable, hurts less. He focuses on the little furry creature, on Cassiopeia, and tries to ignore the pain.</p><p>He wonders where his own magic has gone. Perhaps it fled him with his knowledge of names, with his ability to speak.</p><p>"Cassiopeia... Cassiopeia... Cassiopeia..." He murmurs the name over and over as he lies on the sofa, Cassiopeia walking all over him. Up and down the length of his body.</p><p>Her tail swishes in the air and he finds himself following it with his eyes.</p><p>Back and forth. Back and forth.</p><p>His mother enters the room and bends down to give him a kiss on his forehead. Her mouth twitches in the corners as he turns his attention to her, instead of staring at Cassiopeia's tail.</p><p>"Draco," she whispers, followed by a string of words and noises he cannot understand.</p><p>He blinks. And blinks again.</p><p>Another veil seems to slide off his eyes, and his mother's face seems clearer.</p><p>A lock of hair slides free from behind her shoulder and he watches as it hangs in the air between them, suddenly feeling a deep pressure in his head.</p><p>He looks back at her face and his mouth opens.</p><p>"Hah... Hah... Dah..." He gasps. She said it, didn't she? She said.... She said....</p><p>Her eyebrows knit together briefly before her face smooths out. "Draco?" She says again, and then more speaking he does not understand.</p><p>"Drah... Coh..." He chokes on it, like he did with Cassiopeia the first time." Drah... Coh... Dray... Coh... Draco."</p><p><em>He</em> is Draco. It is <em>his</em> name. The little furry creature is Cassiopeia, and he is Draco.</p><p>Draco and Cassiopeia.</p><p>"Draco," he says again, before his strength leaves him, just like last time.</p><p>His mother's words are coming quickly, so quickly, but now he hears his name in there sometimes. As he blinks, slowly but surely feeling exhaustion sweeping over him, he sees his father come into the room.</p><p>Speaking to him is Draco's mother, and Draco's father just came into the room... Because <em>he</em> is Draco, and Draco is <em>his</em> name.</p><p>He sleeps.</p><p>He wakes.</p><p><em>Draco</em> wakes. Because he wakes and he is Draco. And on the pillow next to his head lies Cassiopeia.</p><p>He is Draco, the little furry creature is Cassiopeia; they are Draco and Cassiopeia.</p><p>He thought that maybe things would change now, now that he knows his name, but... they don’t. His magic is still gone, the world still lacks colour... And his parents still speak and he cannot make sense of the noise.</p><p>His mother gives him a long stick.</p><p>It’s warm to the touch when he holds it, and it feels… Odd. Like it’s making his hand tingle.</p><p>He moves it between his hands, back and forth, back and forth, staring at it. It’s just a long stick, but something about it seems very familiar. He thinks it might be his <em>mother’s</em> long and nice stick. </p><p>He thinks he’s seen it before, but… He turns it over in his hands a few more times, but then he hands it back to his mother. It’s her stick. She should have it.</p><p>She seems sad… Father seems sad too.</p><p>He wonders about it, keeps thinking about it. Maybe there was something special about that stick? If so, it’s something else he’s forgotten… something else he doesn’t know.</p><p>The longer he walks in the Manor, the more he starts to wonder.</p><p>He has a name, Cassiopeia has a name... His parents... they must have names, too. He... He doesn't know his parents' names.</p><p>A short flicker of worry, of anguish, lances through him. What if... What if he never remembers? What if he never remembers what his parents' names are?</p><p>Will they leave him? Will it just be him and Cassiopeia?</p><p>If his parents go away... will the rest of the world go away too? Will Draco be alone, without anyone else except for Cassiopeia, until the day it... or he... dies? He shudders, trembles... He collapses in a small heap on the floor in the middle of one of the long sprawling corridors.</p><p>He'll be all alone. There'll be no one... He knows there must be something wrong with him. His parents speak, but he cannot understand them. He... his magic is gone, but his parents still have theirs. He cannot speak anymore.</p><p>Anymore...</p><p>He doesn't remember a time when he <em>could</em> speak. He cannot remember a time when words and sounds and speaking made sense. He cannot remember the time before he lost the names, before he lost colours, before he lost his <em>magic</em>... He just knows that he has. He knows that once they were things he had, things he had mastered.</p><p>He feels it.</p><p>He loses track of everything, he doesn't know where Cassiopeia went.</p><p>He's alone on the floor in an empty hallway in the Manor.</p><p>Alone alone alone.</p><p>He closes his eyes.</p><p>He drifts.</p><p>When he opens them again, he's in the big room with the sofas. Cassiopeia is curled on his chest and there's a blanket.</p><p>He turns his head to find his parents sitting in two armchairs nearby. He wonders if they're crying.</p><p>He wonders why they would be.</p><p>His parents have names. He knows this. But he... he doesn't know what they are. His mind is empty and blank, there's nothing there... No memories to draw from. Nothing that could help him.</p><p>His name is Draco.</p><p>But...</p><p>He... He shares a name with his parents.</p><p>The Manor shares a name with them too.</p><p>There's more to his name than just Draco. He's not <em>just</em> Draco. He's... He's... He's Draco... Draco...</p><p>"Muh... Muh... Mah.." He struggles with the word, his tongue feels as heavy and leaden as the other times he's tried to speak a new word, say a name he has not already struggled through.</p><p>His parents look up, then, and suddenly they're by his side.</p><p>"Mah... Mal... Malff..."</p><p>His father's big hand strokes back his hair, and his mother gently kisses the back of his hand. They don't speak anything. They just look at him.</p><p>"Malfuh... Malfuuhhh... Malfoy..." It crystallises in his mind then, he knows he finally got it.</p><p>He is Draco Malfoy. The Manor he lives in is Malfoy Manor. His parents are Malfoys.</p><p>Mother Malfoy, and Father Malfoy.</p><p>"Draco Malfoy," he whispers, and watches as his parents suddenly nod their heads. He can see that there are tears running down their faces.</p><p>He doesn't want them to be sad. He doesn't want them to leave him.</p><p>But he doesn't know their names. He cannot remember. He cannot call them by name, he cannot ask them to stay.</p><p>Maybe...</p><p>"F-fa... Faahhhh...." The word sticks on his tongue. He chokes on it. He tries something else. "Mmm... Maahhh.... Moothhh....." He chokes again.</p><p>He wants to say it. He <em>wants</em> it. He hasn't wanted something so much for so long.</p><p>His parents pull him in close, he hears their words wash over him, his name repeated over and over among so many noises and words he doesn't understand. He wants to understand it, suddenly. He wants something else than this, something other than this bleak and blurry grey existence.</p><p>There must have been something else, once.</p><p>When he knew his parents' names. When he could speak.</p><p>"Fath.... Father..." He chokes, and his father's face is suddenly pressed into his hair. Draco can feel the tears. "Mothh... Mother..." His tongue is loosening, no longer feels as thick and useless in his mouth.</p><p>"Mother. Father." He says the words, and his parents cry. The curl around him, and they cry.</p><p>Cassiopeia starts making a very loud rumbling noise.</p><p>Draco's eyelids feel heavy, he struggles to keep his eyes open.</p><p>He sleeps.</p><p>He wakes to a world that feels different. He's in bed, Cassiopeia is there... And his parents are curled around him, one of them on each side.</p><p>He's never seen them sleep before. He wonders if that's what he looks like when he sleeps, eyes closed and mouths downturned, hair spread out and... Draco wonders if he looks like them. They're his parents, so he should... He <em>should</em> look like them.</p><p>The thought of looking into a mirror, the thought of looking at <em>himself,</em> makes him shiver. He doesn't want to know what he looks like. He is Draco Malfoy, he is the son of... of...</p><p>The words slip away from him. His parents are Malfoys, he knows that. They live in Malfoy Manor, he knows that, too.</p><p>He knows some names now, but he doesn't know <em>enough</em> names. Not yet.</p><p>He wonders what happened to him, he wonders what is wrong with him. He wonders how he lost all the names he <em>knows</em> that he should know. His mother and father's names are still gone. He cannot remember what they are.</p><p>He is Draco Malfoy, he lives in Malfoy Manor with Cassiopeia and his mother and father.</p><p>He feels cold.</p><p>He knows that he's missing something. That a great deal of who he is has been washed away in the grey of the world... He remembers that there used to be colours, but he still can't see them.</p><p>He curls in on himself and tries to sleep again, knowing that he's surrounded by his parents and Cassiopeia. He doesn't want them to leave, he hopes that they never will.</p><p>He wonders what would happen if they did.</p><p>If they left or were taken away.</p><p>He wonders if it's his own fault that he's like this.</p><p>He sleeps.</p><p>The next time he wakes, his parents have moved from the bed. His father is sitting in a chair with a book and his mother is humming to herself as she moves through the room. Draco wonders what it is she's trying to do, but he cannot ask.</p><p>They take him downstairs again, they feed him, they stay crowded around him. He carries Cassiopeia in his arms the entire time, even as he feels them threatening to give out, weak and useless. As if it can tell, Cassiopeia climbs up on his shoulders, drapes itself across them, and makes that loud rumbling noise.</p><p>The last piece of food one of the small funny creatures puts before him looks interesting. He pokes at it gently, watches as it moves and falls apart from the action. He takes a bit and puts it in his mouth.</p><p>It's the first thing he has managed to taste since he can remember. It <em>tastes</em>.</p><p>He likes it. He wonders what it is. He tries to find a word for the taste.</p><p>"Ssss.... Suh... Swee... Sweet."</p><p>He blinks rapidly, Cassiopeia's rumbling noise in his ears, and stares at the piece of food in front of him. It tastes <em>sweet</em> and he likes it.</p><p>He eats more. He finishes it and he <em>enjoyed</em> it.</p><p>He looks up from his plate and his parents are... He thinks they're both smiling and crying. He doesn't know why anyone would smile and cry at the same time... But he thinks his parents are doing that anyway.</p><p>It's hard sometimes to understand what his parents are doing, or why they are doing it. Draco barely knows why <em>he</em> does what he does. Understanding someone else seems infinitely more complicated and difficult.</p><p>Sometimes he just wants to go to sleep and not wake back up... But he thinks that would make his parents sad, and he doesn't want that.</p><p>He doesn’t know or understand this world that is around him. It’s too large and he’s too small. He’s tried to make it smaller, he thinks, by focusing on just himself at first, and then slowly becoming more aware of things around him as the existence of the world around him becomes larger and larger anew. He doesn’t want it. But he does.</p><p>He wants to go back to a time when there was colour and light and laughter… A time before he lost the meaning of words and names and… everything.</p><p>Sometimes he wonders if, perhaps, he’s already dead. If this is some odd sort of afterlife. One he’s doomed to stay in forever until he reaches a point where his mind devolves into madness. Or perhaps the void of death finally claims him.</p><p>He doesn’t know, can’t <em>understand</em> what it is. Death is a word he recognises, but… somehow it barely feels real. Death means no longer living… But what does it mean to no longer live? If his parents stopped living, if Death took them… What would happen then?</p><p>Would they go away? Would Draco be left behind? Alone and broken? Or would his parents enter the same sort of state that Draco is in?</p><p>He knows that something is wrong with him. He’s slowly gained the barest of energy to <em>care</em> about that fact. He doesn’t quite manage, not always, but sometimes he does. Sometimes he wishes he wasn’t wrong and destroyed. Perhaps his parents would be less sad, less upset, if Draco wasn’t like <em>this</em>. If Draco was more like <em>them</em>.</p><p>Again.</p><p>He… He knows that he used to be.</p><p>But he doesn’t know why he’s like this now. He doesn’t know or understand why he cannot remember words or how to speak, he doesn’t know why he sleeps and sleeps, or walks the halls of the Manor… Why he can barely taste anything… Why colour has disappeared from his life.</p><p>Cassiopeia is his greatest sort of comfort. Its soft fur and loud cries are able to draw him out of any sort of daze. He thinks he loves it, maybe as much as he loves his parents.</p><p>He knows that, suddenly.</p><p>He loves his parents.</p><p>It is a fact of his world, something he cannot discount or lie about. He loves his parents, possibly more than anything else, and he wants to make them happy. He wonders if there’s any way he <em>can</em> make them happy...</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr class="montecarlo"/><p><br/>
</p><p>Time continues to pass. Draco wishes he could do something different, sometimes… But there isn’t really anything else for him in this world. There’s him, there’s Cassiopeia, there’s Mother, and there’s Father. The only things that exist are all of them, in this large Manor.</p><p>There should be a world outside the Manor and its gardens… But it’s not one Draco knows. Not anymore. He’s starting to wonder if he ever knew it at all. Perhaps his belief that he’s ever known is a delusion, something he clings to because he’s afraid.</p><p>Maybe he only knows the names because Mother and Father have said them so many times, so many times that he learned those words. Even among all the other words that are still lost to him, still no more than mere noise.</p><p>He’s sitting in the garden by the pond, watching the fish swim round and round with Cassiopeia at his side, when Mother and Father come up to him.</p><p>Father reaches out a hand, and in it is another stick.</p><p>It’s a different stick from the one Mother gave him once. It’s not Mother’s stick.</p><p>Draco takes it gently.</p><p>It tingles.</p><p>It tingles and warms and feels like something he’s long forgotten. It’s like a memory of a sensation suddenly overlapping with reality. It’s as if he feels it and remembers the feeling at the same time.</p><p>It’s <em>his</em> stick.</p><p>He doesn’t want to let go of it, but neither Mother nor Father tries to take it from him. They stay near, they talk as they always do, but they don’t try to take the stick.</p><p>It tingles in the palm of his hand all day; until the dark comes and Father makes Draco go into the room where Draco and Cassiopeia sleep, because it is time to sleep again.</p><p>Draco lays the stick, <em>his stick,</em> on the table by the bed, and crawls in under the covers. Cassiopeia lies down on the pillow next to Draco’s head and lets out that loud rumbling noise.</p><p>Draco stares at the ceiling.</p><p>His hand still tingles.</p><p>A new dawn comes.</p><p>Draco hasn’t slept. He lay awake all night, staring at the ceiling, counting the snoring breaths of Cassiopeia sleeping on the pillow next to his head. She didn’t move all night.</p><p>His brain feels heavy with fog, as if he’s not quite real and nothing makes sense. Not quite.</p><p>He stumbles as he walks, he hears Cassiopeia yowl as it moves around his legs. He wonders if he should pick it up… It probably wants him to, but his arms feel shaky and weak and he fears he would only drop it.</p><p>His head hurts, aches, and his feet feel sore.</p><p>He doesn’t know what is wrong with him. Doesn’t understand what has happened.</p><p>He’s gone from sleeping so much to suddenly not sleeping at all.</p><p>It makes no sense, it <em>worries</em> him.</p><p>Whatever it is that is happening to him, he wonders if it’s the beginning of the end. If he’s coming ever closer to the void of Death, if perhaps he’s losing it.</p><p>He thought he was improving. He <em>tasted</em> something. He’s relearned words. He’s <em>spoken</em>…</p><p>But now he can’t sleep, his body aches, and he cannot fathom a life that continues like this in perpetuity. It’s intolerable.</p><p>He’s afraid.</p><p>He collapses on one of the sofas in the main lounge, fearful and trembling. Cassiopeia puts itself on his chest, yowling loudly, but Draco’s hands shake too much to pet it, his arms are too weak for him to hold them aloft for long.</p><p>Perhaps he is dying.</p><p>He starts to lose the ability to keep his eyes open, even as he gasps for breath.</p><p>He hears a garble of words and the rushing of footsteps, but it’s all off, muffled and muddled, as if he were underwater.</p><p>He sees his mother’s face then, suddenly, pale and terrified.</p><p>It reminds him of something, and the memory <em>hurts</em>. Like pain directly put into his nerve endings, unending and damaging. He’ll go mad from the memory alone.</p><p>His mother, desperately trying to keep him safe and alive… Doing her best in horrific odds…</p><p>The face of a man no longer a man appears then, pale and red eyed… Inhuman.</p><p>Draco screams in fear, shakes and trembles. He can’t breathe, the man will kill him, will kill his parents… He has to… He has to…</p><p>There was a boy.</p><p>Someone else.</p><p>He… he did something, didn’t he?</p><p>The man… the inhuman man is gone? Should be gone.</p><p>Because the green eyed boy…</p><p>The Green Eyed Boy died. That’s what happened, wasn’t it? The inhuman man… The inhuman man killed him. And it tore Draco asunder. It stole all the colours from the world and Draco…</p><p>Draco died, too, didn’t he?</p><p>Darkness overwhelms him, and Draco disappears into the void. He knows no more.</p><p>~</p><p>When he opens his eyes again—he’s surprised that he does, he didn’t think he ever would again—he’s in a place he doesn’t recognise. The bed isn’t his bed, it feels different, smells different. The room isn’t his room, it’s white and small, it doesn’t have any of his furniture and… And the bed isn’t big enough for Cassiopeia.</p><p>Cassiopeia isn’t here. His parents aren’t here either.</p><p>Draco is alone.</p><p>All alone in this white, empty room he doesn’t recognise. It smells… clean. Unlived in. Clean and as if someone has taken great pains to make sure it doesn’t smell of anything at all.</p><p>Where is he? Where is Cassiopeia? Where are his parents?</p><p>He doesn’t want to be alone, not at all.</p><p>He tries to sit up, but his muscles protest and he falls back on the bed, panting and shaking. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, he doesn’t <em>remember</em> what is happening…</p><p>But he wants his parents. He wants Cassiopeia.</p><p>More than anything else, he doesn’t want to be alone.</p><p>He’s been alone for so long.</p><p>He <em>shouldn’t</em> be alone. He knows that. Being alone… Being alone means that your Other is dead and gone.</p><p>Draco hasn’t even <em>met</em> his Other… But he remembers now… remembers that he should have one.</p><p>Not everyone has an Other, but Draco does. Did.</p><p>Draco did.</p><p>He’s alone now. His Other is gone.</p><p>Maybe that’s why he’s broken and destroyed? Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him? Perhaps losing your Other does this to everyone. Everyone who has one.</p><p>Memories come trickling back, slowly slowly…</p><p>He remembers the war, he remembers the <em>fear</em> and the echoes of pained screams. He remembers his own pain.</p><p>He sold himself to the greatest monster the wizarding world has ever seen to save his parents… Perhaps that’s what cost him his Other? Perhaps they realised who he was and couldn’t bear to be his. Perhaps they went through a Core Severing to unbind themselves from Draco.</p><p>Tears burn behind his eyelids, and though he presses his eyes shut tightly, he can’t hold them in.</p><p>He remembers now, who he was and what he’s done.</p><p>The world is still grey—it always will be, because Draco’s Other is gone—and now he’s alone. He doesn’t have anyone at his side… Perhaps his parents finally got tired of him?</p><p>He wishes he didn’t remember. Wishes he could go back to that state of destroyed incomprehension.</p><p><em>Anything</em> would be better than this horrid existence.</p><p>Trapped and weak in a hospital bed, surrounded by nothing but white walls and none of those he loves.</p><p>He wonders what it was that finally made him remember, what it was that finally caused it all to come back to him.</p><p>He wishes it hadn’t.</p><p>Perhaps the world in his own brain, his memories and feelings and everything, was a better place for him to be. Perhaps it was a safer and kinder place for him than this new sharper reality… This reality now in which he <em>knows</em> why everything is grey, why there are no colours in the world anymore.</p><p>His Other has either died or undergone Core Severing, and now Draco’s parents and even Cassiopeia have gone away too.</p><p>Maybe they finally got tired of looking after him when he was completely helpless, not even feeding himself or capable of speech.</p><p>He has no idea if this is common for people who suffer the loss of their Other, he only remembers hearing about them losing colour vision not… not whatever was going on with him.</p><p>He closes his eyes against the burn of tears and the harsh feeling of a lump in his throat. He doesn’t want to believe that these are his feelings, that he wants to go back to being helpless and without memories, struggling to remember how to speak, incapable of using magic. But he does.</p><p>The thought of being <em>alone</em> is far worse than the alternative could ever be.</p><p>He curls over on his side just as the tears finally break free from behind his closed eyelids, sliding down the side of his face, over the bridge of his nose, down into the pillow his head rests on. He wants to fall back asleep immediately, completely fade away, and only wake again when the people he loves are back with him.</p><p>It doesn’t take him long to start sobbing in earnest, his whole frame shaking with the force of his grief and sadness, the loud sound of his crying almost echoing in the empty room. He pays it no mind, <em>can’t</em> pay it any mind when the only thing he can think of is the fact that he’s alone and has been abandoned. It’s not like there’s anyone in the room who can be bothered by the noise of it all.</p><p>It hurts so much, as if his chest is trying to tear itself apart.</p><p>Have they left him in the Janus Thickey ward, perhaps? In one of the enclosed rooms? Somewhere where Draco won’t bother anyone ever again? Somewhere where he can fade away, alone and unloved, until his mind or his heart give up and he dies?</p><p>He doesn’t want to believe that his parents would do such a thing, <em>could</em> do such a thing… They love him, he knows that. It’s the knowledge of their love that kept him sane through the war, wasn’t it? It was all because he loves them, because they love <em>him</em>… He couldn’t bear to lose them, he was far more willing to lose himself.</p><p>He compartmentalised everything, hid away pieces of himself behind ever more complex Occlumency just to make sure he managed to survive. He divided himself into bits inside his own head, numbed himself to the trauma, fear, and agony, even as the war ramped up.</p><p>Everything for the sake of keeping himself and his parents alive in an impossible situation.</p><p>He <em>cannot</em> believe that they would have abandoned him.</p><p>But if they haven’t… If they wouldn’t…</p><p>Then… Then they must be… Must be…</p><p>He can’t bear the thought of it, even as the fear of it shakes through his bones, rattles in his skull and makes his teeth clack together as he tries to stop the howl that wants to escape his throat.</p><p>They cannot be dead and gone, he couldn’t stand it.</p><p>It’s bad enough that Blaise and Pansy will never come back, his memories of… Of however long it’s been since the war is fuzzy at best, but he remembers them vaguely. Remembers not remembering them. Remembers wondering if he knew them at all, remembers concluding that they were strangers after they stopped coming.</p><p>They are hazy and indistinct memories at best, but they exist.</p><p>He cannot tell how much time passed, he had no sense of time… he doesn’t think he has any now either. It could have been minutes or hours since he woke up, he can’t tell.</p><p>The door opens then, and Draco hears someone let out a startled shout before the door immediately closes again. It slams against the frame so hard it shudders and then falls open just slightly again, as if whoever entered was careless enough with the closing of the door that it ended up not closing at all.</p><p>Perhaps not the Janus Thickey ward then, clearly no one would ever allow someone in a private room to have an open door. That would just lead to escape attempts.</p><p>He just curls in on himself further, not caring that whoever that was didn’t expect him to be awake. Not that he <em>wants</em> to be, he’d much prefer to never wake again.</p><p>To live having lost everything he was willing to die for is much worse than anything else could possibly be. He shudders and shakes and pretends that this is not what his life has come to at this point. A wreck of a man, left behind by everyone he loves, and everything he thought he had.</p><p>Though perhaps they’re <em>hoping</em> he’ll try to make an escape, a run for it. If he gets out, leaves the hospital, he won’t be their responsibility anymore and their oaths won’t force them to care for someone they cannot possibly think even deserves to live when so many others died.</p><p>So many others who <em>didn’t</em> make the sort of mistakes and horrible choices Draco did.</p><p>He doesn’t know how long it’s been, he hasn’t seen his own reflection either… He doesn’t know if perhaps he fell into a coma and <em>that’s</em> what he’s just woken up from. Perhaps everyone he loves is gone because he’s been asleep for so long that they’ve all died.</p><p>Perhaps he’s just an old, shriveled husk of a man who might as well have died at eighteen for all the time he’s lived his own life. Perhaps Mother and Father really <em>are</em> gone… Perhaps Cassiopeia truly is, too.</p><p>It’s too much to think about, and Draco just lets his tears flow freely, lets his breathing hitch with sobs even as the prolonged crying bout is causing a blinding headache to start building in his skull.</p><p>Perhaps it will split his head open and he won’t have to think about anything else for the rest of his now short life. If no one cares for him, if he’s lost everyone he loves… Then what point is there to live?</p><p>Soon, however, Draco can just make out the sounds of running steps over his own sobbing. The footsteps are accompanied by shouting voices, but Draco cannot parse them for anything that makes even the least bit of sense.</p><p>He buries his face in his pillow and tries to not face the world at all.</p><p>It’s better this way.</p><p>“Mr Malfoy!”</p><p>Draco doesn’t recognise the voice, and he doesn’t remove his face from his pillow, even as it grows wet and disgusting with his tears and snot—he’s never been the most graceful of criers, quite the opposite.</p><p>“Nurse Malbrook, has the patient’s family been notified?” the same voice says, though it’s far more hushed this time.</p><p>This, however, catches Draco’s attention. His… His family?</p><p>“Yes, Healer Binns, we sent a message immediately. But they just left for the night, it’s entirely possible it won’t reach them until morning if we’re unlucky.” The second voice sounds sad.</p><p>Just left…</p><p>So… So his parents were here? They… They haven’t abandoned him?</p><p>He slowly tries to make his body react, tries to make it sit up… But he’s still wracked with sobs and he feels as weak as a newborn kitten. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.</p><p>“Perhaps we <em>should</em> have allowed the kneazle to stay as they requested,” Healer Binns mutters. “Likely would have saved our patient some stress and agony, judging by his reaction to waking up alone.”</p><p>The nurse mutters something, but Draco doesn’t hear what it is. He <em>does</em>, however, finally manage to roll over on his back. He feels all weak and shaky, still.</p><p>The nurse heads  over to him immediately, brushing his dark hair out of his face despite the rest of it being in disarray—Draco can only guess what his own hair might look like right now. Soon he’s leaning over Draco with a kind smile.</p><p>“It’s good to see you awake, Mr Malfoy. I’m Nurse Malbrook. Can you understand me?”</p><p>Draco rubs at his eyes.</p><p>“Yes…”</p><p>He does understand now. He’s spent… A long time, he thinks, not understanding spoken language. But he does now, it’s as if his mind is finally starting to regain what it lost.</p><p>“Excellent. I have some calming draught for you, and then Healer Binns is going to run through some tests with you, okay?”</p><p>Draco watches as Nurse Malbrook takes a glass and pours something from a small vial into it, and then something else. Probably some water and healing draught, two birds with one stone.</p><p>Draco takes the offered glass with shaking hands and drinks it without a second thought. If they’re trying to poison him… well. That would be that, he thinks. It’s not as if he’s in any state to protect himself and poisoning seems like the worst way to get rid of him should they want it. Far too obvious. He’d hope they'd be more subtle than that.</p><p>He watches his fingertips pale from how hard he’s pressing them against the glass, but it’s all he’s got. It’s comforting, somehow, to have this now. Something that anchors him to reality, even as it seems like it wants to simply float away from him.</p><p>He still doesn’t… He doesn’t know what’s been wrong with him. Why he’s been… <em>like that</em>.</p><p>It can’t… It can’t just have been losing his Other, it can’t be. He’s never heard of anything like it before, he’s only heard of people losing the ability to see in colour…</p><p>He feels his tears slow, even as his head continues to pound due to his extended crying bout. The fear, the sadness, the anxiety, all of it slows. It’s as if he can feel all of it just bleed out of him, leaving him calm and relaxed.</p><p>He knows it’s all because of the calming draught, but it’s still a relief to feel that blanket of calm sweep over his frayed emotions. In fact, it’s so calming he starts to feel his head begin to droop, as if he’s about to fall back asleep.</p><p>“Oh no, Mr Malfoy, I’m afraid we need you to stay awake for just a bit more,” Healer Binns says as Nurse Malbrook takes the glass from Draco’s hands.</p><p>As Healer Binns’s magic washes over Draco, he relaxes into the bed and tries not to think of anything at all.</p><p>Not his parents. Not Cassiopeia. Not what’s happened to him. And not what might have happened to his Other.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr class="montecarlo"/><p><br/>
</p><p>“Oh my darling,” Mother says, tears springing up in her eyes as she clutches Draco’s hand to her chest. “I’ve been so worried for you, I’m so glad you’re finally back with us.”</p><p>Cassiopeia has made her home on Draco’s lap, purring up a storm, and Father has his face buried in Draco’s hair, clutching his other hand like a life-line.</p><p>“What… What happened?” Draco isn’t sure he’s ready to hear the answer to the question at all, it’s no doubt going to be something terrible and dark and awful and he’d rather not relive it at all.</p><p>Healer Binns lets out a loud hum. “I suppose you could call it an Occlumency accident, though we’re still not sure what triggered it.”</p><p>Draco stares at her, uncomprehending.</p><p>“What do you mean by an Occlumency accident? How can you have an accident with Occlumency…?” Fear shoots down Draco’s spine as he remembers just <em>who</em> was the one to teach him Occlumency in the first place. Did Bellatrix deliberately teach him something incorrectly to cause him harm?</p><p>“Well, you had quite a rough time, didn’t you?” Healer Binns says, and coughs.</p><p>Father lets out a small anguished groan; it’s barely audible, but it still sends a shiver down Draco’s spine. He doesn’t like to see his father, either of his parents, so distraught.</p><p>“I… Yes…” He did. By the time he realised the reality of being under the Dark Lord’s thumb, the reality of being his follower, it was already far too late.</p><p>“You used Occlumency to compartmentalise the trauma, keep it from affecting you too much, and keep going, correct? If we’re wrong, you’ll need to let us know, this is just the educated guess we’ve been working under since you… well.”</p><p>Draco shivers again, but nods. He did. He did his very best to shut things away in little boxes inside his head, to not let them affect him. It didn’t always work—he still couldn’t manage to kill Dumbledore, after all—but he doesn’t think he would have survived if he hadn’t done it.</p><p>“Well, <em>something</em> happened, we’re still not sure what the trigger was, I think you know that better than anyone else, and things spilled over, for a lack of a better term. Your shields ran rampant inside your head, and you locked it all away so tightly you essentially… gave yourself amnesia to a severe degree to protect yourself from the trauma.”</p><p>Draco stares at the healer, his chest aching. He knows <em>exactly</em> what would have set that spiral off, what final trauma would have caused his Occlumency to go haywire.</p><p>“I lost my Other…” he murmurs, casting his gaze down to Cassiopeia’s curled-up form. “Everything is… It's just grey now.”</p><p>There are sharp intakes of breath from everyone else in the room, sharp enough that it causes Cassiopeia to become alert, her head shooting up and her ears twitching back and forth to try and assess the danger.</p><p>Healer Binns coughs. “That… That would do it, yes.”</p><p>Draco relaxes against the pillows again, squeezing his parents’ hands. He doesn’t want them to feel guilty, because losing his Other is not something they could have protected him from.</p><p>“It took us a few weeks to sort out what, exactly, was causing your more or less catatonic state. When we did, we brought in expert Legilimens to sort you out.”</p><p>Draco frowns. That… that must have been the people with the magic that hurt. He vaguely remembers them coming, casting spell after spell and then they all seemed to give up and stopped coming.</p><p>“But… They failed.” Draco has no idea what to make of that.</p><p>Healer Binns nods. “You, young man, are a very gifted Occlumens. Usually that would be something to be happy about, no doubt, but in this particular case it caused us a lot of trouble.” She shakes her head. “Your Occlumency, even in its wild and disarrayed state after the accident was too good for any of the Legilimens we brought in to undo. They would have needed to brute force their way into your mind, and in your fragile state it would only have caused more harm than it would have done good.”</p><p>Draco blinks tiredly and tries to process that. He knows that he… got good at Occlumency. He wouldn’t have survived the Carrows or the Dark Lord himself if he hadn’t, if they’d been able to see his doubts and fears. But he still didn’t expect… Something like this.</p><p>“Ultimately, the only thing that we could do was let you break out of it on your own. We gave your parents—” she gestures to Mother and Father—“Some ways to try and help foster a connection between you and your memories and your magical core to try and help you make your way back on your own.”</p><p>He looks down at Cassiopeia. He thinks… He thinks she was the first thing that helped. But he’s not sure why…</p><p>His mother suddenly lifts his hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles.</p><p>“You used to talk about wanting a kneazle when you were younger, and you always talked about how you would name her Cassiopeia and she would be the smartest kneazle anyone had ever seen.” She huffs out a small laugh. “But you’d <em>just</em> gotten Aquilla, and upon learning that you would only be able to take <em>one</em> pet to Hogwarts, you cried for weeks and ultimately decided that you would have your kneazle after you graduated because you didn’t want to leave either Aquilla or Cassiopeia home all year.”</p><p>Draco remembers that. He loves Aquilla, his owl, but he always wanted a kneazle <em>too</em>.</p><p>He realises with a start that Aquilla must have been there occasionally… But he never had a very cuddly relationship with Aquilla, they were more… we-spend-time-in-the-same-room-together friends. But Draco has always enjoyed that companionship, too… But it seems that he couldn’t really… He couldn’t tell that Aquilla was even there.</p><p>So many things just didn’t seem <em>real</em> when his mind was like it was.</p><p>“Yeah…” He looks at Cassiopeia again and smiles.</p><p>“We hoped that maybe Cassiopeia would be enough, and you <em>did</em> improve but… Then you stagnated again.” Mother looks sad. “That’s when the healers suggested that maybe we should reunite you with your wand.”</p><p>“But… I lost my wand.”</p><p>To Potter, he doesn’t say. Doesn’t even want to <em>think</em>, no matter how true it is. He <em>did</em> lose his wand to Potter.</p><p>“Yes, but you used my wand, until the battle. We found out later from Mr Potter that you lost it in the Room of Requirement, but… Well, I have another wand, so we gave you that first. We hoped it would work for you, since you’d used my old wand previously.” Mother strokes his hair and kisses his knuckles again, eyes almost unbearably soft. “And just like Cassiopeia, it did help somewhat. But not fully.”</p><p>Draco nods. He has vague recollections of holding what he at the time thought was a warm stick, but must have been his mother’s wand.</p><p>Father straightens with a kiss to Draco’s hair.</p><p>“That’s when we started to look into where <em>your </em>wand might be. We knew you lost it when Mr Potter and his friends made their escape from the dungeons, but we couldn’t be sure what happened to it after that.” Father’s voice sounds rough, and his eyes are slightly red-rimmed.</p><p>Still, Draco thinks, he looks better than when last he saw him. Well, <em>properly</em>.</p><p>“It took us a while, but Mr Potter finally answered our owls… or rather, St. Mungo’s sent him an owl on our behalf, and he answered that one. It seems <em>he</em> had your wand, and he was willing to return it to you.” Father looks conflicted, and Draco can only assume it’s because his feelings towards Potter are conflicted.</p><p>Father used to believe in the Dark Lord after all, so Potter was his enemy… But towards the end… Well, no Malfoy was especially enamoured with the Dark Lord at that point. But they’ll always do what they must to survive.</p><p>“So it was… After that…?” Draco stumbles over the words.</p><p>Healer Binns nods. “Indeed. You managed to properly reconnect with your core, but it sent you into shock after so long that you ended up here in our tender care. There was a brief moment when we feared you might not make it, but you pulled through in the end.”</p><p>Draco shudders slightly at that. Even though he's here, mentally aware and <em>alive,</em> knowing that he nearly died is still a terrible thing to be told.</p><p>If he died now, everything he and his parents suffered through would have been for nothing. He still wouldn’t have made it to the end of the war. He ended up almost dying right at the end of it, and then the after effects of it might have killed him months later.</p><p>He doesn’t quite know what to do with himself now.</p><p>He can… only assume that Potter and his side won it, for surely the Dark Lord would not have spared a second to keep Draco alive <em>and</em> there would have been no Potter to return Draco’s wand to him.</p><p>Draco is many things—dramatic, occasionally anxious, attention-seeking—but he’s not stupid. He can put two-and-two together for something as simple as this.</p><p>He doesn’t know anything about what has become of the world since the end of the war, he doesn’t even know how his parents are… Seemingly not in prison?</p><p>He’s <em>happy</em>, of course. But he doesn’t understand it at all. It seems incredibly odd that they would have… People <em>knew for sure</em> this time around, about his father’s allegiance… Surely…?</p><p>He can only hope it’s not some sort of temporary thing. That his father was only safe from Azkaban as long as Draco himself was in… Well, the state he was in. Though he doesn’t understand why the Wizengamot would have cared about that at all.</p><p>Those cowards completely buckled beneath the Dark Lord’s corrupt regime and started sending muggleborns to Azkaban for “stealing magic”, after all. Why would they spare Draco’s father for <em>Draco’s sake</em> now when they must have been desperate to try and get into the good graces of the population again?</p><p>“We want to keep you here for a few days to keep you under observation, just to make sure that you won’t suffer any further negative effects. We’ll be running some tests as well, just to make sure.” Healer Binns gives Draco a gentle smile, and then she nods her goodbyes to his parents and leaves the room with Nurse Malbrook at her heels.</p><p>He looks at his parents then, they look… Healthy. Well. <em>Happy</em>.</p><p>He hasn’t seen them like this since before the war.</p><p>“What…? What happened? The war…?” He stumbles over the words, feeling unsure of himself.</p><p>Mother kisses his hair again, and then they explain.</p><p>Draco cannot <em>believe </em>that his mother <em>yelled at Harry Potter</em> in the middle of the Great Hall just after the battle was over because she thought Draco was dead. He’s also getting palpitations just <em>thinking</em> about the fact that his mother looked the Dark Lord in the face and <em>lied to him</em> to help Potter, just to find Draco, just for his sake.</p><p>The idea that his parents hadn’t really fought, that instead they’d deserted the Death Eaters and started searching the castle for him was… Unthinkable.</p><p>His father stealing a dead man’s wand? Understandable.</p><p>His father outright <em>murdering </em>Greyback before he could kill a Gryffindor girl in retaliation for the months he’d terrorised Draco with the threats of what he <em>could</em> do and would very much <em>like</em> to do? A bit less so. Not because Draco thinks his father doesn’t love him, but simply because the Dark Lord was still <em>very much alive</em> and outright killing one of his more useful servants was the kind of mark against him Draco would assume his father would have avoided.</p><p>And <em>apparently,</em> Mother has also reconciled with her sister—the one who married a muggleborn, not the one who was clearly more in love with the Dark Lord than her husband—so now Draco has an aunt who he doesn’t need to fear.</p><p>It seems Father managed to ensure that Aunt Andromeda’s daughter only lost her husband and an arm, rather than losing her life. Went quite a ways to mend things between his mother and his aunt, according to Father, anyway.</p><p>His mother saved a Weasley, apparently. Which… Well.</p><p>Of course, he’s actually quite glad they did all of it, because it seems their turn against the Dark Lord during the final battle and the very real positive effects that had for Potter’s side seems to have helped them quite substantially to go free with only minimum of damages.</p><p>Potter and his ilk apparently made a sweep through the Ministry and Wizengamot and got rid of most of the old guard due to their actions during the war—Merlin’s beard, Draco doesn’t know how they got the power to do something like <em>that</em>—and the new people were far less petty point scorers with decades of old grudges. That must have helped Draco’s parents too.</p><p>He wonders if the only reason Potter even agreed to return Draco’s wand to him was because of the people his parents saved. Draco doesn’t know and doesn’t <em>want</em> to know.</p><p>He has more important things to consider than Potter.</p><p>Potter is insignificant.</p><p>What’s truly important… His parents. Cassiopeia and Aquilla. His friends.</p><p>His future.</p><p>He doesn’t have much hope for the last one, it’s not like he’s taken any N.E.W.T.s and he doubts anyone is in any hurry to offer him a job or a place in society anytime soon.</p><p>Father might have always enjoyed being a man of leisure, but Draco is quite certain that his ever-moving brain would start to dribble out of his ears from lack of stimulation if he tried to do that.</p><p>Well, Father has of course had his own little hobbies to keep himself occupied, as has Mother, but… Well, Draco’s simply not sure anyone would want to buy potions—just as an example—from someone who is neither a potions master nor has a N.E.W.T. in potions. They’d be more likely to run screaming in the opposite direction, if Draco’s being frank.</p><p>Professor Snape is gone…</p><p>That one is… It’s hard to swallow. Draco always liked Snape, and only in part because the man would occasionally dote on him—well, as much as Professor Snape doted on anyone. He was Draco’s favourite Professor, the only one who wasn’t biased against Slytherins—how could he be, being a Slytherin facing the same prejudices himself—in favour of all the other houses.</p><p>And he taught potions, and he was a very skilled Potions Master.</p><p>Father mentioned that there is at least one portrait of him at Hogwarts, but Draco doesn’t know if he wants to go see it.</p><p>He’s grown up around portraits, he knows how they work and how they’re a way to capture a bit of someone you love to remain in the world after they're gone without them becoming something as terrible as a ghost. And while portraits are an accurate reflection of them, and capable of learning and growing, in many ways as real as the person themselves…</p><p>Well, Draco isn't sure he’s ready.</p><p>Especially not since he’s got no doubt that there’s more to Snape than he knows, and he’s not sure he wants to know those hidden depths. Because if it turns out that he never cared for Draco at all, that he only ever did everything on Dumbledore’s orders or something like that…</p><p>Still.</p><p>Draco thinks he needs to look into the future, one way or another.</p><p><br/>
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<hr class="montecarlo"/><p><br/>
</p><p>Returning to the Manor, properly <em>seeing it</em>, is a bit of a shock.</p><p>It’s been heavily remodelled and cleaned out. It’s… lighter, clean. It’s so… it reminds him so much more of what it looked like during his childhood rather than when You-Know-Who had been in residence.</p><p>Magical houses tend to take on and reflect the magic that happens inside them, and the people who live there. The Dark Lord and his dark and corrupt nature warped the Manor quickly… Though Draco would also wager that some of the dark artefacts Father used to keep have been destroyed, and some of the cursed heirlooms have at <em>least</em> had their curses removed by a Curse Breaker.</p><p>It just… feels better in the Manor now. Like the air is easier to breathe, like your limbs are lighter and easier to move.</p><p>He hadn’t realised how bad it had gotten until now that the oppressive feeling of the darkness is gone. Now that he feels like he can <em>breathe</em> again.</p><p>He greets Aquilla, stroking his feathers gently as Cassiopeia lounges across his shoulders, purring in his ears. His two companions seem to get along at least; Draco likes that. He doesn't know what he would have done with himself if they were at odds or incompatible.</p><p>He tries to make himself comfortable at home, but he just can't help but feel like something is wrong.</p><p>It’s as if he’s missing something.</p><p>Of course, the more he thinks about it, the more obvious that becomes. Of course he feels like something is wrong, that something is <em>missing</em>. His Other is gone, has either died or broken their connection. That’s why Draco’s Occlumency went haywire in the first place.</p><p>But he has his wand now, he can use his magic again. So he gently starts to cast smaller spells: balls of light for Cassiopeia to hunt, fetching books from the shelf without having to get up, making Mipsy’s muffins dance across the table to make his parents laugh during dinner.</p><p>He’d like to get back to a healthy state where he can cast magic however much he wants, but Healer Binns impressed him with the importance of letting his core slowly get used to magic usage again, since he’s gone so long without even touching a wand.</p><p>If he would have had any chance of taking his N.E.W.T.s, he probably would be a bit more put out about it, but as it is… Well, he’s got nothing that he <em>needs</em> magic for right now anyway. He has his parents and the house elves, and they can cover anything he might need while his core recovers.</p><p>He’s mostly just bored. He <em>likes</em> coming up with clever charms—even if he usually just used them to mock Potter—and brew potions. Now he’s stuck doing mostly what he did before he came out of his Occlumency coma: walking around the Manor and the gardens with Cassiopeia—and sometimes Aquilla—though now he also spends some time reading.</p><p>He can’t even enjoy the gardens as much as he used to, because they’re all grey. There’s no amazing bursts of colourful flowers to admire, it’s just all a grey shroud.</p><p>He can admire the forms and shapes… But little else about their appearance.</p><p>He takes to walking with his eyes closed, to navigating his way through life without opening his eyes. Feeling his way forward, letting Cassiopeia guide him…</p><p>It’s not healthy, perhaps, but he cannot bear the constant reminder that his Other is lost to him.</p><p>It’s not something he’d ever really considered before. Most people don’t even know if they <em>have</em> an Other, much less who it is. It’s not something you even talk about often, it’s all chance—though people are often drawn to their Others, and it’s not uncommon for someone to find out as they near death that their spouse, as they pass on, was their Other all along.</p><p>There’s really no way to find out, except to lose them.</p><p>The rituals to ‘reveal’ your Other are notoriously fickle and unstable, and are just as likely to be influenced by who you <em>hope</em> it will be as much as who it actually is. Only charlatans deal with them, preying on the desperate and lonely.</p><p>Or the delusional.</p><p>Now that he thinks about it, Draco wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few people have been told that their Other is <em>definitely</em> Harry Potter, simply because it’s what they want to hear and what they will pay for. And likely Lockhart before Potter.</p><p>Heroes tend to draw in that sort of crowd, from what Draco’s seen and heard growing up.</p><p>But really, either Draco’s Other died, or they went through that ritual, found out who he is, and decided that it was worth a Core Severing to break any connection between them.</p><p>To be reminded of it constantly, through the lack of colour around him, is dreadful.</p><p>It may not be a healthy way to live, Draco is quite sure that it isn’t, but for now it is how he will live. Just until he can properly come to grips with it, accept what has happened.</p><p>It’s just too much to deal with. Too much to accept that he will have to live with for the rest of his life.</p><p>He just needs to take it one step at a time.</p><p><br/>
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<hr class="montecarlo"/><p><br/>
</p><p>Draco is heading down from his room towards the sitting room when he suddenly hears voices.</p><p>“So, Mr Potter, what can I help you with?” Mother sounds calm, but Draco wonders if she’s nervous. Perhaps Potter is here to demand some sort of compensation for having returned Draco’s wand to him.</p><p>“Well, err…”</p><p>There’s a brief pause.</p><p>“Actually, we know that you have a large collection of books. Very <em>old</em> books.” Oh. It’s <em>Granger</em> who talks now. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised that Potter didn’t come alone. And it seems like Potter still needs her to talk for him. How very typical.</p><p>“We do, yes. We have one of the largest and oldest private collections in the world. Rivalling even that of Hogwarts, though ours has had less… <em>pruning,</em> shall we say, over the years.” Father sounds proud, and Draco can imagine him straightening in his seat as he speaks. “Is there anything particular you’re looking for?”</p><p>Draco finds that he both is and isn’t surprised that his parents would be willing to help Potter out. But it is what it is.</p><p>Cassiopeia lets out a loud yowl then, prompting Draco into motion again. No point in standing around here like someone hiding in his own home.</p><p>“Oh, Draco, there you are!” Mother says, “I’m afraid lunch has been delayed. Mr Potter and his friends came for a visit, you see.”</p><p>“Quite,” Draco says, keeping his eyes firmly shut. “I happened to hear your voices as I neared the door.” He continues into the room, counting the steps slowly and carefully until he makes it to one of the sofas, where he carefully takes a seat—relieved that he hasn’t accidentally sat down in someone’s lap.</p><p>As soon as he’s taken his seat, Cassiopeia makes her way into his lap, purring up a storm.</p><p>“Malfoy… Uh… Why are you keeping your eyes closed?” Potter can’t let anything go, can he? Nosy prat.</p><p>Draco sighs. “My Other died, or underwent Core Severing, which is what caused my… State, shall we say. I have recovered, but I’d rather not be constantly reminded of the fact of it. And since everything is black-and-white for me now… Well.” He gives an elegant shrug.</p><p>He doesn’t <em>need</em> to tell them anything at all, of course. But perhaps, just perhaps, he’s hoping for a bit of sympathy. Maybe this can be a way for the Golden Trio to stop hating him.</p><p>It’s a better shot at getting accepted by society than just about anything else he can do himself.</p><p>“Other? What’s that?” Granger sounds confused.</p><p>How novel, something even Granger doesn’t know, no matter how many books she’s read.</p><p>Perhaps it’s mean of him to think so, but she always has been a know-it-all, even if you completely disregard blood status.</p><p>There’s a slapping noise.</p><p>“I didn’t even think of Others!” Weasley grumbles. “That might actually be it, Harry!”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Forever confused Potter. All is well in the world.</p><p>“An Other is like…” Weasley stumbles over the explanation.</p><p>“Like an extension of your self. The other side of your coin. Someone you share a strong bond with, be it platonic or romantic. Someone with whom you have complimentary magic.” Mother’s voice is calm. “Not everyone has an Other, and there’s no sure way to tell who your Other <em>is </em>or even if you have one at all.”</p><p>“It’s rather common to have two people who have spent most of their lives together one way or another—as friends or lovers—until one passes and the one who still lives loses colour vision and only then do they know that they were each other’s Other.” Father sounds tightly controlled, but Draco knows that it’s just because otherwise he’d sound dreamy. He’s always found the concept of Others very special, he’s told Draco as much on numerous occasions as he was growing up.</p><p>“I… Huh.”</p><p>“Right,” Weasley says. “And there have been cases when someone has died briefly, but the healers have managed to resuscitate them, but their Other still lost colour vision… They would usually regain it again later though.”</p><p>“Then it sounds like what we should be looking into is the concept of Others,” Granger says. “Is there anything about that in your library, Mr and Mrs Malfoy?”</p><p>“Of course,” Mother says. “But if I may: it may be better if you seek out a healer to discuss it with, they see this sort of thing quite often. So if someone you know has lost colour vision, a healer is more likely to have answers for you than old books.”</p><p>“Are you sure, Mrs Malfoy?” Potter sounds genuinely respectful. How odd, Draco thinks, though he supposes that Potter may have warmed up to her after she saved his life. That would certainly make Draco warm up to someone.</p><p>“Of course. And if you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can always come back here later.”</p><p>“Well! Thank you very much, Mrs Malfoy.” Granger sounds genuinely thrilled, and Draco can only assume that she’s smiling. Possibly at the thought of having the run of Malfoy Manor’s library. He doesn’t think anyone who went to Hogwarts at the same time she did has missed how much she enjoys books.</p><p>As soon as the Golden Trio take their leave, Father takes Draco by the elbow and leads him to the dining room instead. Mother and Father have been quite… Well, <em>accepting</em> of Draco’s new odd habit.</p><p>Though he supposes that it cannot possibly be worse than what he was like when he was still at the mercy of his own Occlumency.</p><p>Lunch is delicious, and any thoughts Draco might have had regarding <em>why</em> Potter and his lot want to look into Others is quickly washed away.</p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr class="montecarlo"/><p><br/>
</p><p>Draco’s core has grown stronger and stronger, and he starts to experiment more and more with charms and transfiguration.</p><p>Perhaps he can create some sort of magic lenses that will allow him to see in colour, despite having lost his Other. If he works at it, surely it must be possible? It’s <em>magic</em> after all, and only your imagination should truly limit you.</p><p>After all, accidental magic usually does some rather <em>peculiar</em> things. All magical beings should only learn to <em>harness</em> their magic, not limit it.</p><p>Draco’s not going to lock himself up into impossibilities. That way lies only madness.</p><p>It takes about two weeks for Father to start muttering about maybe getting Draco to take his N.E.W.T.s—or their equivalents at least—in France instead.</p><p>Draco actually kind of likes the idea, so he just continues to experiment as he has. He may never get to take his N.E.W.T.s at Hogwarts, but if he at least gets grades in equivalent tests that are recognised by the British Ministry, then he can apply for positions and things that would otherwise be out of his reach.</p><p>If his father wants to go through the hassle to get France—or most likely Beauxbatons—to agree to it, Draco’s just going to happily accept it. It just seems like a misfortune for him to have gone through all those years of Hogwarts, to have suffered through the reign of the Carrows just to end up without any N.E.W.T.s to show for it. Not even a single Acceptable.</p><p>He wonders how it went for his friends, what <em>they</em> did while he spent so long just wandering around his family home as little more than a zombie, literally locked away inside his own head.</p><p>He hasn't had the guts to contact them to ask.</p><p>He always <em>has</em> been a coward.</p><p>He considers sending Aquilla to them with letters, but even that he doesn't dare. He's written the letters, but they remain on his desk. Unsent for the foreseeable future.</p><p>Still, the idea of making himself spectacles to see in colour, despite having lost his Other, gives him something to focus his mind on. </p><p>It also requires him to actually keep his eyes open to <em>read</em> and do his research… But it’s easier to ignore the lack of colours when you’re inside in a library filled with books, than it is when you’re in a lush garden that should be a minor explosion of colour. At least when he’s in the library, he can pretend it’s just a trick of the lighting.</p><p>Thus it’s only in the library he keeps his eyes open, everywhere else he just… He’s not ready to deal with it yet.</p><p>Mother and Father have taken to joining him in the library, though usually they simply sit on the sofas drinking tea and chat in low murmurs as he works. He wonders if they’re just starved from seeing him… be him… that they can’t stand the thought of being separated from him for too long.</p><p>He’s only gotten so far as to narrow down the material he should use as a base for the glasses—obsidian—and not much beyond that when Father suddenly hands over a roll of parchment and kisses his hair without a word.</p><p>Draco watches as his father takes a seat on the sofa next to his mother and then turns to the scroll with a shrug and a frown. He has no idea what it is, but…</p><p>Unrolling it, he finds that it’s a letter written in French, detailing in elegant cursive that he’s been accepted for a six-month fast-track at Beauxbatons for exams that are N.E.W.T.s equivalent and can be transferred into N.E.W.T.-grades should someone need it.</p><p>He watches his eyes grow huge as he looks at the letter, reading it again and again, to make sure it’s not a fabrication.</p><p>“Dad…” he murmurs, staring reverently at the letter.</p><p>“They’re expecting you after Yule is over, so we have some months to prepare you and help you reconnect to your core properly before…” Father clears his throat. “Before you head off to finish your education.”</p><p>It’s more than Draco had ever expected. He hadn't really thought that Father would <em>succeed</em> in convincing Madame Maxime—she didn’t seem the type to be overly concerned with such things when Draco met her during his fourth year at Hogwarts—but he supposes that the Malfoy family’s standing in France has never suffered, and shouldn’t even be much worse off here in Britain <em>either</em> considering his parents actions during the final battle…</p><p>He throws himself at his father, clutching him in a tight hug.</p><p>His only other option would have been to go back to Hogwarts, and Draco doesn’t think he can ever walk back inside that castle. Not after… Not after everything.</p><p>But this…</p><p>This is a new lease on life, somehow.</p><p>He might not ever <em>need</em> a job, but… this way, nothing will stand in his way if he <em>wants</em> one.</p><p><br/>
</p>
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</p><p>He doesn't actually expect to ever see Potter and his friends again, in some ways he'd almost <em>hoped</em> for it. After all, they're no doubt the Golden Trio, the favourite people of wizarding Britain right now. After all, Potter was the one who took down Voldemort and his friends would have been there all the way. No way would Potter ever have gotten as far as he did without Granger following behind reading from a book all the way.</p><p>Still, he once more comes into the sitting room to find Potter and his friends in there with his parents.</p><p>So perhaps discussing things with a healer didn't work out for them with whatever they were looking into.</p><p>He steps inside the room, not even bothering to wait at the door to try and listen in this time.</p><p>“Oh! Draco!” It’s beyond odd to hear Granger of all people use his given name.</p><p>So odd, in fact, that Draco nearly opens his eyes. He catches himself at the last minute, he has no interest in looking at them. Last he saw Potter…</p><p>Well.</p><p>Draco takes a seat on one of the sofas, and lets Cassiopeia make herself at home in his lap before he starts to gently pet her.</p><p>“Don’t stop on my account,” he murmurs. “Just pretend I’m not here.”</p><p>“Now now, darling,” his mother chastises, and he tilts his head at her in acknowledgment.</p><p>“Uh, as I was saying, er,” Potter begins with his usual eloquence. “I’ve been colourblind on one eye since the Battle of Hogwarts, so we’ve been trying to figure out what happened. It wasn’t until you sent us to talk to healers regarding losing your Other that we really got anywhere.”</p><p>“Exactly,” Granger says with far more enthusiasm than Potter. “All the healers we spoke to mentioned that losing colour vision in one eye—when there’s nothing wrong with the eye itself—is usually something that happens when one member of a Pair dies temporarily, and then is resuscitated.”</p><p>Draco doesn’t stop petting Cassiopeia, though he changes from long strokes across her back to gentle scratches under her chin to keep the shaking of his hands from being obvious. So Potter is here because something happened to his Other during the Battle of Hogwarts…</p><p>“Usually, the resuscitated one of the Pair loses colour vision in one eye while the other loses in both because they <em>feel </em>the death of the first.”</p><p>“Right,” Weasley chimes in. “The healers said it usually corrects itself when the part of the Pair who didn’t die sees their Other and knows them to be alive and well again.”</p><p>“It’s really fascinating,” Granger butts in. “It seems to be quite rare for the situation to continue for as long as it has with Harry, however, so the only conclusion the healers could come to in the end is that his Other, well… <em>Doesn’t</em> know he’s alive and well. Hasn’t seen him as such since it happened.”</p><p>“Are you sure?” Father’s voice is low and serious, but Draco cannot think of why. It’s not like Father to care much about Potter’s situation in general, though Draco supposes things have changed a lot since the Battle of Hogwarts, all things considered.</p><p>“It’s the only explanation we’ve been able to find.” Granger sounds certain.</p><p>“I see,” Mother says softly. “But Mr. Potter has been all over the newspapers and made appearances far and wide since the war, who <em>wouldn’</em>t ha—Oh.” She cuts herself off mid-word, which is not something Draco thinks he’s ever heard her do before.</p><p>“Yeah, er, so that’s why we’re here,” Potter says and coughs slightly.</p><p>“Are you here to look at the library?” Draco says, still not opening his eyes and keeping most of his attention on the softness of Cassiopeia’s fur.</p><p>“Er… No.”</p><p>How odd. What else could they possibly be here for?</p><p>Draco supposes he could ask, but he’s not quite feeling inclined to. It’s not like Potter owes him any answers. And Draco is hardly going to beg for any. That would be far beneath him.</p><p>He hums and continues to pet Cassiopeia, and waits for the conversation to pick up again despite his interruption.</p><p>Pregnant silence falls, and Draco can't help but wonder if everyone is staring at him. He wouldn't exactly be surprised per se, but he doesn't see why they would be. He hardly said anything <em>odd</em>.</p><p>"Somehow I remember him as being smarter than this," Weasley mutters, probably in an attempted whisper.</p><p>"Ron!" Granger sounds scandalised, which is pretty funny, but Draco still feels slightly insulted.</p><p>“I’m sorry I haven’t paid attention to you and your lives,” Draco mutters and shakes his head. </p><p>He has deliberately not thought about Potter and his side. Why should he be thinking about them <em>now</em>. So Potter’s Other thinks he’s dead. Why should Draco care?</p><p><em>Draco’s</em> Other is either dead or went through Core Severing. <em>His</em> problem isn’t exactly solvable, unlike Lucky Golden Boy Potter’s. All Potter needs to do is find someone who lost their colour vision sometime during the Battle of Hogwarts and who hasn’t… Looked at Potter… Since…</p><p>What?</p><p>That’s…</p><p>That can’t be…</p><p>He freezes with his hand just barely avoiding clutching Cassiopeia’s fur harshly. He tilts his head down and keeps his eyes stubbornly closed, biting his lip.</p><p>Absolutely not.</p><p>This is all just… A farce. They’re just mocking him.</p><p>Others are supposed to feel drawn to each other subconsciously, unknowingly circling each other and having a place in each others’ lives until the end. Draco and Potter… </p><p>No. No, they’ve never been like that. It would make far more sense for Weasley or Granger to be Potter’s Other.</p><p>It’s all just too convenient. </p><p>How does he even know that Potter has even lost colour vision at all? How does he know that Potter isn’t here to mock him for losing his Other? It would be just payback for all of their squabbles and disagreements during their time at Hogwarts.</p><p>He curls in on himself, hunching over Cassiopeia.</p><p>“Draco…” Potter’s voice is soft, but Draco doesn’t want to hear it.</p><p>“Just leave me alone,” he mutters, trying to focus on the way Cassiopeia’s stomach vibrates under his hand.</p><p>From somewhere deep inside his own memory, he can feel the phantom sensation of Fiendfyre heat, the remnants of panic, and the sound of Potter’s voice ‘We can’t leave them!’, a strong hand grasping Draco’s own, pulling him up on a broom.</p><p>He loses himself in the memory of being pressed against Potter’s back, screaming himself hoarse in fear and rage. Vince…</p><p>No wand. No way to protect himself.</p><p>Trying to beg for his life.</p><p>An unseen force punching him in the nose.</p><p>Hiding in an alcove in those moments of false stillness.</p><p>And then…</p><p>Nothingness.</p><p>His memories shattering like a dropped mirror.</p><p>The shards reforging themselves into a labyrinth, trapping him inside, leaving him to traverse his family home as if searching for a way out of his own head.</p><p>He shudders.</p><p>It <em>can’t</em> be.</p><p>“Hey… Draco… Please just look at me.” Potter’s voice is still soft, sounding almost… Intimate.</p><p>Draco is acutely aware that they’re not alone. Potter shouldn’t sound like that in front of others, in <em>public</em>. Dear Merlin, Draco’s <em>parents</em> are watching. Where does Potter get off sounding like that in front of Draco’s <em>parents</em>.</p><p>“Why are you even doing this?” Draco just cannot understand why. What does Potter hope to gain from this, beyond the return of colour vision in both of his eyes? It’s not like he wants anything to do with Draco at the best of times…</p><p>“Having an Other is supposed to be special.” Potter’s voice is low and sad. “We might not have had the best start… But how do we know what we <em>can</em> have unless we try?”</p><p>Draco doesn’t answer, doesn’t even open his eyes.</p><p>He’s not a Gryffindor, recklessly forging ahead. He’s a Slytherin, and his need to ensure he makes it <em>out</em> of things in the end rather than perish along the way tells him to not open himself up to this pain. Nothing good can come from this, surely not.</p><p>And then Cassiopeia moves, sits up and butts her head under Draco’s chin, forcing his face upwards. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, even as she continues to headbutt him and lick at his jaw with her raspy tongue, purring and purring.</p><p>“Darling...” Mother’s voice is soft as she speaks, and Draco only barely suppressed the flinch. He can tell that she wants him to do it, to take this leap of faith.</p><p>“Oh Draco.” Father has never been as free with pet names as Mother, but Draco has always been able to hear “darling” and “mon petit chou” and everything in between in the way he says Draco’s names at times. The knowledge that even Father wants Draco to do this…</p><p>It’s enough.</p><p>Draco draws a shuddering breath and his eyes flutter open, taking in the grey world around it. He opens his mouth to say something scathing, just as he turns to look at Potter, but as he does…</p><p>It starts with Potter’s eyes, suddenly almost <em>glowing</em> green in his face, before colours seem to explode outwards from them, painting the world around them with all the colours Draco had somehow forgotten existed.</p><p>“Oh…” he breathes, and tries not to make a fool of himself.</p><p>Potter’s face splits into a huge grin, and it seems as if he only barely restrains himself from leaping at Draco.</p><p>It… It doesn’t make sense.</p><p>Why would Potter even be glad to see Draco in the first place? And to have it confirmed that they <em>are</em> each others’ Other? </p><p>Has the world changed so much since the end of the war? More so than Draco could ever hope to even dream of?</p><p>Even so…</p><p>In his lap, licking at his jaw, Cassiopeia continues to purr. </p><p>On the sofa to his left, his mother is dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief and his father is giving him a look of endless affection.</p><p>On the sofa to his right, Granger and Weasley are leaning against each other and looking at Potter with joy, huge smiles on their faces. Weasley is even laughing.</p><p>And sitting there, on the sofa on the right, sits Harry Potter and grins like a fool.</p><p>With a promise of taking his N.E.W.T.s in France, with colour returned to his world, and with this new <em>potential</em> with Potter…</p><p>Draco’s  future is looking bright indeed.</p><p>And he has not been left behind.</p>
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